


Patience

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 10 Years of Castiel, DeanCasVersary, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 20:51:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16025759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: A little vignette to mark 10 years of Dean and Cas.





	Patience

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't so much a fic as just a little moment, a little vignette where we can share 10 years of Dean and Cas with them in their awkward, not-quite way.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Mal <3
> 
> P.S. This hasn't been beta'd in any capacity, so apologies for that - you get it fresh from my brain to the page.

Dean’s concept of time wasn’t the most accurate. He could always tell you what day of the week it was, but ask him how many years ago something happened and he’d crease his brow, grin hopefully, and shrug.

It was probably a side effect of spending an extra forty years of your life in Hell, Cas had decided; a body that held eighty years of memories in a forty-year-old frame.

Cas’s own perception of time was quite different. It wasn’t his fault—angels were just built that way. His internal clock was unerringly accurate and he had been formed with patience. He’d watched majestic mammoths migrate to the east in search of safe quarter for their young, and never once hoped to speed their plodding footfalls. Landmasses had shifted, and he’d merely marveled at the puzzle of earth moving its pieces.

Something odd had happened to him when he met Dean Winchester, though. He’d become… impatient.

Now, to say that waiting ten years is _impatient_ is probably pushing it, even Cas would have to admit. But he knew that once, to him, ten years would have been a mere commercial break in the game of the world.

But ten years of waiting for something you want so badly slowly becomes torture.

So eventually, it gets sidelined, named improbable, dismissed.

So imagine Cas’s shock when Dean turned to him in a run-down diner, at thirteen and four-sixtieth minutes past seven in the evening, twenty-four breaths after his last joke with Sam and four heartbeats since Sam had risen to go to the bathroom, and said, “Do you know what day it is, Cas?”

Cas blinked. “Tuesday,” he said with conviction, wondering if that was why Dean had waited until Sam left.

“Smartass.” Dean rolled his eyes, though Cas had no idea why.

“The eighteenth of September?” Cas tried again.

“That’s right,” Dean grinned proudly, picking up his beer. “Happy anniversary, Cas.”

_Happy anniversary, Cas._

The phrase took a rollercoaster ride through Cas’s mind, soaring up an incline of imagination before it looped and plummeted back down to where reality lurked.

_Oh. He...remembers._

He squinted, his head tilting, and Dean’s eyes mapped the movement before Cas even completed it, familiar to a fault. “Ten years,” he offered, wanting to clarify that Dean wasn’t spouting off some other anniversary that Cas wouldn’t have considered. Ten years since Hurricane Ike didn’t seem to be Dean’s concern, and ten years since Law & Order won an Emmy didn’t seem to be his field. Dean and procedural crime dramas just didn’t really get along.

So… the other ten years.

“Ten years since we met,” Dean agreed, his eyes dropping to somewhere near Cas’s tie knot, his voice hitching a note that a human might not hear.

“You stabbed me,” Cas recalled, more fondly than such an action would call for.

“You were a dick, “ Dean laughed, picking at the label of the beer.

“I was,” Cas agreed.

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes and Cas believed them to be done. He was wrong.

“I probably should have, uh,” Dean cleared his throat awkwardly, “taken you somewhere to celebrate. Or got you a gift. That’s what people do right, for this kind of stuff?”

“We aren’t those people,” Cas offered softly, reaching across to squeeze his friends shoulder. “We did things a little backward, after all. With the stabbing, the shotgun, the betrayals.”

“Yeah,” Dean huffed, his eyes raising back to Cas with a warmth that was unexpected. ‘We ain't exactly those people. You’re right.”

“Nonetheless,” Cas risked, “knowing you for these ten years has been—”

“The greatest part of my life.” Dean’s interruption was sudden and accompanied by a shy smile. It sat oddly on his features. “You said that once, remember?”

“I did.” The conversation was baffling, but Cas was a more-than-willing participant. “I meant it.”

“I never told you I love you too. Not once.” Dean’s fragmented sentences carried the weight of a guilt he had never shared.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. Stop acting like it is.”

Cas blinked, lost again. “Dean, I’m unsure how you wish me to respond.”

“Just, stop being so reasonable, man,” Dean burst in exasperation. “Tell me I’m a jerk for never telling you I love you. Because I am.”

“You are,” a ghost of a smile caught at the edge of Cas’s mouth. “You’re a jerk for never telling me that you love me. So,” Cas turned his body in the diner booth, bringing up his knee so he faced Dean fully. “Tell me.”

“I…” Dean’s tongue darted out, moistening his bottom lip rather than say the words. “This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.”

Cas waited, years of practice knowing that he could lead Dean to an emotion, but God-forbid he expect him to admit to it.

At the back of the diner, Sam came out of the bathroom. He took one look at Cas and Dean and shuffled straight back in, pretending he’d never left.

A TV enthused about a football game somewhere to their left.

A waitress yelled to the kitchen for fries.

Dean leaned across, into Cas’s space. For a moment Cas thought the human was going to kiss him, and his brain short-circuited. Instead, Dean reached for his tie. Turning it, neatening it, tightening it. A soothing, familiar action to them both.

“I love you, Cas.”

“I know, Dean.”

“I don’t mean, like—”

“I know, Dean.” Cas raised his hands, catching Dean’s fingers as they tugged at the dark blue fabric.

“But I can’t, uh,” Dean’s eyes finally shifted, up to Cas’s own. The smile there seemed to encourage him. “Not while we still…”

Dean’s left hand dropped the tie, gesturing to the newspapers stacked on the table, to Sam’s laptop, to the scraps of clues they had.

“I understand, Dean. It’s too much of a risk,” Cas said. He did understand. He’d always understood. But his words shook, finally speaking it aloud. “Not while we still lose each other all the time.”

“But one day,” Dean promised, finally smoothing the tie down against Cas’s chest.

“One day,” he agreed.


End file.
